The Dark Side of the Moon
by Beeezie
Summary: When you're in a dark forest surrounded by werewolves in the middle of the night, never ask, "What's the worst that can happen?"
1. Werewolf Capture

Rachael Codnor fought the urge to rub her temples as she looked at the woman sitting before her. When Adams from the Muggle Liason Office had stuck his head in and informed her that she had a new case, she'd really wanted to smack him.

She was second in command of the Werewolf Capture Unit, and right now she really needed to be focusing on the possible werewolf running around Edinburgh, not sitting here with a muggle who'd seen some people dressed up for Halloween and jumped to ridiculous conclusions.

Rachael did not doubt that the woman was genuinely upset. She was wringing her hands and chewing on her lip as her eyes darted around the room; she was clearly a muggle deeply out of her comfort zone.

That, however, did not make this a werewolf case.

However, Rachael was not going to be the one to dismiss this without at least hearing her out. A waste of time didn't have the same capacity to come back and bite you in the arse as discovering you'd dismissed a case prematurely did.

"What makes you think that you saw a werewolf?" she asked, leaning forward and trying very hard not to sound condescending.

The woman took a deep breath, but as she opened her mouth to speak, her eyes filled with tears. Rachael handed her a handkerchief, trying to conceal her impatience.

"I'm sorry," the woman said, wiping her eyes and sniffing. "It's just been…" she trailed off and looked away.

"Just start from the beginning…" Rachael paused, realizing that she didn't know the woman's name.

"Catherine." The woman gave a shaky smile and pushed her frizzy brown hair back from her face. "Catherine Kingston." She took a deep breath and began to talk. "I live in Millerston, in Scotland. It—"

"I know it," Rachael said. The Hogwarts Express passed within a few miles of the village, and one of her friends in school had grown up there. Rachael had only visited it once, but from what she recalled, it was a quiet, lonely little village with an abnormally high population of wizards. Catherine looked faintly surprised, and Rachael added, "Keep going."

She certainly felt a degree of sympathy for the muggle woman; magical creatures frightened muggles at the best of times, and for good reason. Even a lone pixie could do serious damage if it thought it could get away with it, and werewolves were no pixies. However, she also did not have all day to play nursemaid to muggle women.

Catherine swallowed hard and shifted in her seat. "A few months ago, I was walking home from a friend's house. It was a bit late, and we're just outside the village, but it's really not far, only about half a kilometre, and it's always been very safe." She said this all very quickly. "My neighbor had been bitten by a wild dog the month before, but since then there hasn't been anything, so…" she trailed off.

Rachael frowned. "A wild dog?"

"Yes," Catherine said. "That's what she said. She needed stitches and a rabies shot."

Rachael nodded. She knew enough about the muggle world to vaguely understand the magical equivalent to the treatment Catherine was describing. "Well? What happened?"

Catherine licked her lips. "I heard a rustling in the bushes, and then something jumped out at me. It came at me, it bit me, and I kicked it. Then it ran away."

For the first time since Catherine had sat down, Rachael's curiosity was piqued. For any animal – wild dog, wolf, or werewolf – to run away just because a small, rather unimposing woman had kicked it was very odd.

"It looked more like a wolf than a dog," Catherine said uselessly. "But I wasn't sure. The light on that part of the path was out, so I didn't see it very clearly."

"What makes you think it was a werewolf?"

"Well, it was a full moon, but I didn't." Catherine was studying the hourglass on Rachael's desk that was counting down to the next full moon. "Not at first. My brother is a wizard, you know, but I don't know much about magic. I didn't think that werewolves were real."

Well, that explained how she'd ended up at the Ministry of Magic.

"What changed your mind?" Rachael asked. Maybe Charlie Adams hadn't sent her a dud after all.

"The bite seemed to take a long time to heal, even with stitches. I still have a scar." She held out her arm, and Rachael got to her feet and leaned over her desk to look at it.

It was always hard to tell with these things, but to Rachael, it definitely resembled a werewolf bite.

It also looked fairly old.

"When did this happen?" she asked.

"Almost three months ago." Catherine had progressed to chewing on her lip. "I didn't know what was happening. I…" she hesitated. "I've had some problems before. With hallucinations and blackouts. I haven't for awhile," she hastened to add, "but I was afraid that that was all it was."

This was definitely starting to sound like a werewolf case. She'd have to apologize to Adams.

"But?" Rachael prompted her.

She sighed. "After the second time, I started to worry. It seemed unusual that it would happen at the same time every month. So I mentioned it to my brother, and he started asking me questions. I asked him what he thought, and he said he thought it might be a werewolf." Her eyes were filling with tears. _"I_ might be a werewolf. I didn't even know that werewolves existed, I swear. If I'd known…"

"What's done is done," Rachael said quickly. The wheels were turning in her head. If this was a werewolf case – and it was looking increasingly likely – there were at least two other werewolves in the area at large: Catherine's friend and the "wild dog" that had bitten her. The idea that no one else had been bitten, however, in the four or five months this had been going on, seemed very unlikely.

Why hadn't anyone reported this? There were enough wizards in the area that they should have known.

"I…" Catherine hesitated. "I think I might have bitten someone."

Rachael suddenly realised what was worrying her so much. "It's not your fault," she said. "We don't hold werewolves responsible for what they do in wolf form unless they clearly acted recklessly, and regardless, you're a muggle. You couldn't have known."

Catherine visibly relaxed. "Is there a cure?" she asked tentatively. "My brother said there wasn't, but…"

"No," Rachael said, and Catherine deflated again. "We can give you a potion that will allow you to keep your mind, but we can't stop you from turning into a wolf, if that is what's happening."

Personally, at this point she was all but convinced, but one could never be sure.

After a moment, Catherine nodded. "It's better than nothing."

Rachael stood up. "Thank you for coming in," she said, extending her hand. Catherine took it gingerly and shook. "You're free to go home. I'll be coming by in the next day or two with a few of my associates. We'll want the name of your neighbor and to see the site where the incident took place."

Catherine nodded, and Rachael saw her to the door. A nervous looking young man was sitting outside, and when the door opened, he jumped to his feet.

Rachael smiled at him. "Thank you for bringing your sister in," she said. "We appreciate it. We'll be by in the next few days to follow up."

The man swallowed and gave a quick nod. He didn't seem able to speak.

As Rachael watched them retreat down the corridor, she felt a familiar twinge at the top of her head that always seemed to happen before everything all went to hell.

This was starting to seem a lot like trouble.


	2. The DCB

The sun was barely up when the alarm went off.

Teddy stirred sleepily beside her, and Victoire shut off the alarm before he could really wake up. "Work?" he asked without opening his eyes.

"Yep." Victoire pulled the covers back as she got out of bed, and he let out an involuntarily yelp when the cold hit his bare chest. "Sorry," she said quickly, tossing the blankets back over him. She, unfortunately, had no such refuge from the cold.

On the bright side, that meant that within a few moments of getting out of bed, she was already quite awake. On the downside, it was incredibly uncomfortable.

She grabbed a thick purple jumper off the chair next to their bed on her way to the dresser. The second drawer was still half-open from the day before, and she rummaged around until she found a long-sleeved shirt and trousers that looked like they probably wouldn't clash out of the darkness of her bedroom.

When she slipped out into the hallway to cross over to the bathroom, she was relieved to find that the trousers she'd grabbed were black and the shirt a teal sort of blue; that was perfectly presentable. There had been a day the week before that she'd ended up with blue trousers, a blue shirt, blue socks, and a blue jumper. Victoire was not overly focused on fashion, but she did try to avoid major fashion faux pas.

She emerged about five minutes later and pulled her bright red hair into a messy bun on her way to the kitchen. After a quick, functional, and completely uninspiring breakfast - Teddy was the cook in the family - she grabbed her coat, gloves, and handbag off the coat rack and walked out the front door. As she made her way down the stairs, she tried not to think about Teddy, who was almost certainly slumbering peacefully under several layers of blankets.

Victoire loved her fiancé dearly, but right now, she also resented the hell out of him.

When she reached ground floor of their building, she ignored the front door, instead turning and striding purposefully toward what looked like a solid brick wall at the back of the building. She closed her eyes as she stepped through it.

The lobby on the other side was reserved for magical transportation. It was also silent but for the crackling of the fire. Other than the flicker of the flames and a glowing orb on the landlady's desk, it was also pitch-black.

Avoiding the dark shapes littered around the room, Victoire went toward the fire. When she reached the tile floor, she took a pinch of floo powder from a stand just in front of the hearth. When she threw it into the flames, they turned green, and she stepped into the fire. "The Ministry of Magic, Dangerous Creatures Bureau."

When she stumbled out of the fireplace on the other side, a quick walk down the hall brought her to the office she shared with her squad. Turning into it, she was confronted by the sight of her immediate superior, Van Dedworth. His head was down on his desk, and he was snoring softly.

Victoire grinned and crept past her own desk so she could poke him hard in the shoulder.

He jumped and was actually raising his wand before he recognized her laughter. "Fuck, Vic." He tossed his wand back onto his desk in disgust. "Don't _do_ that."

"You were sleeping," she informed him as she boosted herself up to sit next to a large pile of papers on his desk.

"I was resting my eyes," he corrected as he bobbed his head from side to side, working out the kinks in his neck. "That's what it's called when your boss does it."

"Of course." She began to kick her leg against his desk; very few people were in this early, and the silence throughout the corridor was positively eerie. "What's new today? Why'd the boss want us in so early?"

Van shrugged and leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. "Dunno. I guess he'll tell us soon enough."

Victoire had first met Van through the youngest of his many siblings, Gallagher, who had been in her year at school. It had been slightly odd to join the Dangerous Creatures Bureau, or D.C.B., and be expected to work alongside his much older brother and sister, both of whom had left Hogwarts before they'd even started.

After the first month or so, however, she'd adjusted. She had to; there weren't that many people working for the D.C.B.

"How's Teddy?" Van asked. "Still sleeping peacefully?"

Victoire made a face. "Yeah, the jerk. He runs off to Brazil for five days, doesn't sleep, and then Gringotts gives him three full days off. I should've been a Cursebreaker."

Van nudged her playfully, a crooked grin playing across his face. "Nah. Admit it, you'd miss the trolls."

Victoire made a face. "The trolls? No. The acromantulas and the manticores…" she shrugged and let her leg hit his desk once more with a loud thud before letting it hang. "Maybe."

He laughed, but before he could say anything else, they were interrupted by someone coughing behind them. Victoire looked up and Van swiveled around; a blond man was standing there, looking uncharacteristically somber. "We have a problem," he said.

Victoire jumped off the desk and started toward his office. She heard Van's chair squeak as he got up to follow her. "What is it?" she asked.

He shook his head and held a hand out to motion them both into his office. When they entered, they discovered that a few of their coworkers already in there.

Seamus Finnigan closed his office door behind them. Victoire and Van exchanged a puzzled look as they each took a seat.

"What is it?" Victoire repeated.

He sighed. In the end, it was his second-in-command, Lavender Brown, who answered.

"Werewolves."

Victoire immediately felt confused. The D.C.B. was specifically formed after the Second Wizarding War to deal with creatures that it was okay to hurt or even kill. Werewolves definitely did not fall under that category. One of Victoire's best friends worked in Werewolf Capture; it was definitely not the same.

"What?" She heard her confusion reflected in the voice of Van's sister Viv. "What do werewolves have to do with us?"

Lavender ran a hand over her scarred face and sighed. "Here's the thing," she said. "Werewolf Capture has a really, really big problem. There aren't enough of them to deal with it. They seem to think that Werewolf Support and Werewolf Registry aren't good enough in a fight – which is probably true – and that Dragon Research is liable to go overboard with spells - which is also probably true. That pretty much leaves us."

"Why not the Hit Wizards or Aurors?" Van asked sensibly. "At least they try not to kill people bringing them in. We know how to duel first and ask questions later."

That was a slight oversimplification, but not much of one.

Seamus shook his head. "They can duel wizards. They're not trained to fight monsters."

"So what do they want from us?" Brennan asked from the corner. Victoire rather liked Brennan; they'd been four years apart in school and in different houses, so they hadn't known each other well then, but they'd joined the D.C.B. at the same time, and over the last few years had become fairly good friends.

Seamus glanced over at Lavender, who raised her eyebrows slightly.

"Let's start at the beginning."

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Seamus and Lavender laid out the story Werewolf Capture had told them.

Three weeks before, a muggle woman from an isolated village had come in claiming that she was a werewolf. Upon being interviewed, she revealed that she had been bitten one night three months before by what she had thought at the time was a wild dog.

She had gone on to say that as the next full moon approached, she began to feel ill, and on the night of the full moon had transformed into a wolf. She had assumed that she hadn't been getting enough sleep and was losing her mind - she'd had trouble with her mental health in the past.

However, when the same thing continued to happen every full moon, she mentioned to her brother, who (thankfully) was a muggleborn wizard. She was not familiar enough with the magical world to know that werewolves were real, but her brother immediately recognized the signs and had taken her to the Ministry.

Like most werewolves, she had only the vaguest memories of the nights she had spent transformed, but she did feel like she recalled biting others.

There were no reported deaths in the area and no reported werewolf sightings, which seemed unlikely given the high population of witches and wizards in the area. Furthermore, when Werewolf Capture had gone to the village to ask about any suspicious animal bites or attacks, they had been met with hostility and suspicion.

As this point, they had no idea how many werewolves might be running around the area, and needed help in a big way.

"Is it just me, or are there more werewolf cases than usual this autumn?" Victoire murmured to Van.

"It's not just you," he said.

Lavender regarded them all for a moment. "This is a mess," she said flatly. "They have no idea how many people have been running around biting other people, or for how long. However, they do need to tackle this problem now, before even more people get infected." She paused for a moment. Her face was inscrutable; even after more than three years with the D.C.B., Victoire sometimes found it difficult to read Lavender's expressions through the heavy scarring on her face - a lifetime of experience reading her father's expressions didn't seem to translate to anyone else, even though Lavender's injuries were superficially quite similar to her father's. "Or before the bodies start piling up."

Van, who was significantly better at reading Lavender's expression than Victoire was, having over a decade more of practice - some of it in far more intimate settings than work - whistled softly. "This probably hits the top ten for the tensest I've ever seen her. And that's including the first time I asked her out."

Despite the gravity of the situation at hand, Victoire had to work to muffle her snort.

"If anyone doesn't feel up to the task, tell us now," Seamus said. "This isn't what we usually do, and I don't expect everyone to be comfortable with it. I'll just say that you're on another case and can't be pulled off it."

He glanced around the room. Though her heart was beating wildly, Victoire did not say anything.

Neither did anyone else in the room.

Seamus waited a bit longer than Victoire thought was really necessary before nodding. "Well, you have a few days before we get back to Werewolf Capture if you want to reconsider. That's all."

When they got back to the cubicle they shared with Sienna Kettletoft when she wasn't out sick with the flu, Van immediately sat down at his desk and pulled a stack of papers toward him.

"Did you know anything about that?" Victoire asked Van, and he shook his head without looking up.

"No," he said shortly. "But I'm not happy about it."

Victoire frowned and perched on her own desk. "How come?" He looked at her incredulously, and she sighed. "Other than the obvious."

Van threw his quill down and leaned forward, resting his head on his hands. "Jesus." She watched him silently, and after a minute, he shook his head. "This is just a mess," he said. "Lavender's right. This is a fucking mess." He enunciated every word. "And I don't know what the hell we're supposed to do other than help them out, but I don't like this."

Victoire didn't much like it, either. Dealing with werewolves always made her feel a little uncomfortable; the idea of having to be careful not to hurt the creature who was trying to kill you defied all logic.

But this was her job, and whatever Seamus said, she suspected that dodging out would end up resulting in desk duty until the werewolf case was resolved.

If there was one thing Victoire did not do well, it was desk duty. And at any rate, she didn't much like facing trolls, either. How much worse could werewolves be?

Try as she might, Victoire hadn't quite put the werewolves out of her head when she and Van packed up for the day. Usually, she just used floo powder to get home, but today, despite the cold, she felt that she could use the walk. She waved goodbye to Van when they reached the street, and began to make her way home.

By the time she got to her building, her ears were absolutely freezing, and she was starting to shiver. She stomped up the stairs and when she reached the flat door, she began to fumble for her key.

The door opened before she could find it.

"Hey," Teddy said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. "Merlin, you're _freezing._ What, did you walk home?"

He stepped back to let her in, and she nodded as she sat on the bench to pull her boots off. "Yeah. I just needed to think."

"Something happen at work?" he asked, a tinge of concern in his voice as he leaned against the opposite wall.

She sighed. "Yeah."

"Want to talk about it?"

"In a bit." She kicked her boots aside and tossed her gloves and coat on the bench. "Right now, I just want a hug."

He held out his arms, and she walked into them. As she stood there with her cheek pressed up against the soft wool of his sweater, feeling his chest rise and fall as he breathed, she felt a sense of comfort wash over her. Everything would be all right in the end.

That thought would come back to haunt her.

* * *

 _A/N: Thanks so much to Guest and yellow 14 for their reviews on chapter 1! I hope this chapter didn't disappoint._

 _Branwen_


	3. The Full Moon

As a howl broke the forest around her and the crackle of the dry autumn leaves began to draw closer, Victoire felt the goosebumps rise on her arms. She was really starting to regret volunteering for this assignment - two weeks of desk duty suddenly wasn't looking that bad.

She didn't understand how her friend Micah could do this on a regular basis. She'd always thought that he was a little cracked for joining Werewolf Capture, but now that she was actually out here, she was starting to seriously consider the possibility that he genuinely needed a Healer.

There was something about werewolves that made her skin crawl in a way that trolls and acromantulas and manticores didn't; the idea of a human being trapped inside a bloodthirsty wolf's body made her feel deeply uncomfortable, and having to consider her opponent's well-being went against every fibre of self-preservation in her body. Nobody cared if she killed a murderous kelpie or a troll. Plenty of people – herself included – would care if she killed a werewolf.

Victoire shifted her grip on her wand. There was a rustle in the bushes behind her, and she spun around and cried, "Stupefy!"

A werewolf fell out of the bushes and lay motionless on the ground.

The howl sounded again, and this time, another answered it. Both sounded close, and Victoire cast her eyes across the indistinct dark shapes of the underbrush and the long shadows cast by the towering trees, trying to identify any hint of movement.

That was the other issue with werewolves. Victoire wasn't afraid of the dark, but when she was battling against dangerous creatures, she liked to see where they were. Unfortunately, with werewolves, that wasn't really an option.

She heard the soft snap of a branch behind her and spun around, pointing her wand at the approaching shape.

Van was faster. "Petrificus Totalus!" she heard him cry, and another werewolf sprawled onto the forest floor, stiff as a board. The moonlight glinted off its teeth, and she suppressed a shudder. It was very difficult to look at those teeth and remember that these were really just human beings.

The night was suddenly alive with snarls and breaking branches as werewolves and ministry officials alike trampled through the foliage. Jets of red and yellow light shot through the forest, and through the light cast by one of the stunners, Victoire saw a small werewolf cowering behind a tree, its tail between its legs.

She felt a stab of pity toward it as she pointed her wand at it and said softly, "Petrificus Totalus."

The spell hit the werewolf square in the chest. It looked up, saw Victoire, and bared its teeth.

She backed away. "Stupefy!"

The jet of red light shot out of her wand, hit it, and had absolutely no effect. It began to approach.

"Stupefy!" she heard Van cry. Another jet of light hit the werewolf in the back. Like hers, it had no effect.

It broke into a run, and she felt her heart leap into her throat. "Stupefy!" she cried again, more out of desperation than any expectation that it would work. There was, again, no effect. "Impedimenta!"

She heard Van yell something indistinct, but she didn't dare take her focus off the werewolf.

If the usual spells weren't working, she decided to take a page out of her cousin Albus's book. "Aqua eructo!" she tried, and the jet of water that issues from her wand knocked the wolf back. She continued to back away, and pointed her wand at a nearby bush. "Bombarda!"

The sudden explosion seemed to startle the werewolf into momentary submission, but Victoire had no time to congratulate herself. A sudden growl from behind her made her whip around, and she saw the glint of two feral eyes as another wolf leapt from behind a shrubbery.

"Stupefy!" The werewolf slumped over the bush, its mouth wide open as its saliva dripped onto the bare branches.

Victoire turned back to the other wolf, but it had disappeared. A crack in the bushes to her right alerted her of the danger, and she turned her wand toward the source, blessing the fact that it was autumn and therefore made it difficult for anyone, let alone mindless beasts, to move around without detection. As the small werewolf emerged from the bushes, she saw the moonlight reflect off something metallic around its neck. It lunged at her, snapping and clawing, and she kicked out at it. Her foot connected with something, and it fell back with a whimper.

She heard someone or something else crashing through the bushes.

There was no way in _hell_ that she was going to let a few werewolves take her down. She pointed her wand at a rock on the ground a few feet away as the werewolf shook its shock off and said, "Locomotor rock!"

It zoomed into the wolf's head, and it collapsed, twitching feebly on the ground. Victoire turned toward the oncoming noise, her wand raised and her heart racing wildly.

Van emerged panting from the bushes. He stared at the werewolf for a moment, bent down, and yanked something from around its neck before pointing his wand at it and saying, "Petrificus Totalus!"

It finally stiffened and lay there, unable to move or make more noise than a barely-audible whimper. Victoire listened for any other noise around them, but the only sound seemed like it was too far away to be any immediate threat.

She slumped to the ground. Her entire body suddenly felt like it was on fire.

Van turned to her. "Are you okay?"

"I think so." Victoire reached down to rub her leg, which seemed to hurt the most. She found her trousers in tatters below the knee, and her heart sank when she felt something wet and sticky. When she brought her hand away, it was covered in blood.

She looked up at Van. His face was shrouded in shadow, but she could hear him suck in his breath. _"Shit."_


	4. The Aftermath of the Forest

Victoire managed to hold it together long enough to report the incident calmly to her boss and the head of Werewolf Capture and get home without incident. Once she'd entered the flat she shared with Teddy, however, she collapsed against the door. Her entire body was shaking.

Why had she volunteered for this stupid assignment in the first place?

Sure, it had _sounded_ interesting at the time, but she'd had misgivings. She should have trusted herself.

But like an idiot, she had jumped on the opportunity to learn more about werewolves. Or, more accurately, to avoid desk duty.

She took a deep, wavering breath, and let it out.

Their bedroom door opened, and Teddy stuck his head out. When he saw her slumped on the floor, his eyebrows drew together. "What's wrong?" he asked as he hurried over to her.

Victoire could feel the reverberations of her heartbeat throughout her entire body, and she could not seem to stop trembling. She tried to open her mouth to say something, but found herself unable to speak.

"Vic?" Teddy knelt by her side. She didn't looked at him, and after a moment, he put his hands on either side of her face. She allowed him to turn her head to look at him. Now she could see real fear blossoming in his face – in his eyes, in the way his lips were parted, in the slight crease between his eyebrows. "Are you all right?"

She breathed in and out several times, trying to consider how she should be responding to that. She wasn't in any immediate danger, but…

He saw her hesitation. "Are you seriously hurt?" She shook her head. "Is anyone else seriously hurt?" She shook her head again, and his grip tightened a little. "So what's wrong?"

Victoire steeled herself and pulled up her trouser leg, revealing the bandage on her calf. He let go of her to look down, and alarm flashed across his face.

"Come on," he said. She could hear a slight tremor in his voice. "There's no reason to be sitting here on the cold floor."

She allowed him to help her up and guide her into their bedroom. He closed the door behind them softly as she stumbled toward their bed. At this point, she was seriously wondering how she'd managed to hold it together for as long as she had.

She tried to unbutton her trousers, but her fingers were shaking too much to manage it.

Larger hands closed over hers and pulled them back. Victoire leaned back into Teddy's warm, welcoming body as he wrapped his arms around her. It didn't help much, but it didn't hurt, either.

"What happened?" he asked softly. Victoire could feel her body start to tremble again, as if from a distance - she felt so disconnected it was almost as though it was happening to someone else. He tightened his grip. "Take your time."

Her vision began to blur, and she twisted around to bury her face in his shoulder as the tears started to spill out onto her cheeks.

"Shh," he murmured, keeping one arm tightly around her waist and moving his other hand up to stroke her hair. "Shh. It's okay. I'm here."

"I don't know what it is," she said through her tears, her voice muffled by his body. "We don't know if it's a bite or a scratch." She pulled away from him suddenly. "I need a shower." He let her go, looking thoughtful as she made her way over to the clean laundry basket and pulled out some clothing. When she glanced over at him, his gaze was fixed on her and his head was cocked slightly to one side. "I'm _fine."_

He rose, grabbed his wand off the side table, and walked to join her. "I don't want to contradict you," he said, "but you do realize that your eyes are puffy and you just grabbed my shirt, right?"

Victoire examined the clothing in her hands and realized that he was right. "Yes."

Teddy shrugged. "Just wondering."

When she began to walk toward the door, he followed her, and she looked back. "Teddy, when I said that I needed a shower, I didn't mean—"

He held up his hands. "I know you didn't, but please try to understand where I'm coming from. My fiancée just walked into our flat saying that she may have been bitten by a werewolf. I have no intention of getting in the shower with you. However, I'd also prefer not to let you out of my sight. I'm fairly alarmed right now."

Victoire felt a faint smile spread across her face. "Okay," she said, letting him follow her out the door. When they reached the bathroom door, however, she stopped and put her hand on his chest. "I need to use the toilet. Am I allowed to do that alone?"

The corners of his mouth twitched, and he leaned against the wall. "I guess that's reasonable enough."

When she opened the door a few minutes later to let him in, he immediately slid down to the floor to lean against the wall.

After she'd turned on the water, she knelt down. He flashed another strained smile at her, and before she knew what she was doing, she'd sunk her fingers into his hair and pulled him forward for a kiss. At first it was tentative, but once their lips had touched, she felt a flash of desire course through her, and she deepened the kiss and swung her leg over his body so that she was straddling him. His wand clattered across the tiles as he brought his hands up to pull her closer.

When she pulled back, he was glassy-eyed. "I love you," he whispered.

Victoire kissed him again, softly. "I love you, too," she said, before rising and stripping off her remaining clothing. As she was about to climb into the shower, she heard Teddy sigh.

When she glanced over at him, he was staring at her. "Sorry," he said, not sounding remotely apologetic or looking away. "I'm appreciating the view."

She had no idea how he could appreciate the way she looked right now. Her hair was a mess, and she was sweaty, dirty, and covered in bruises and scratches.

Teddy could be a mystery that way.

As she stood there, under the water, letting it wash away all the sweat and dirt and blood, she could feel her heart starting to speed up again.

What if she _was_ a werewolf? What would that mean?

How would that affect them?

How was she even going to get the potion? She certainly wasn't up to brewing it, and she didn't want to _tell_ people. Where would she even go for the full moon? How was she going to tell anyone? _When_ was she going to tell anyone? Her parents and Louis would be hurt if she didn't tell them immediately, and Domi might actually kill her.

Maybe Teddy wouldn't want her anymore.

When she yanked the shower curtain aside and grabbed a towel off the rack, the flash of desire that had flooded her only a short while before was gone. In its place was just coldness and fear.

After quickly drying herself off, she pulled the fresh clothing on as quickly as possible without looking at Teddy. She moved toward the door, and he quickly rose to his feet and opened it for her. Once she'd reached their bedroom, she climbed into bed and crawled under the blankets. The soft click of the door told her that he'd followed her back in, and she could hear him lay their wands gently on the side table before sitting on the bed.

"Vic?" She turned over and looked at him. "Did I do something wrong?" he asked tentatively. "I didn't mean to smother you. I just…" he trailed off and rubbed his face. "Can I join you?"

Victoire nodded, and he pulled back the blankets to crawl in. When he hesitantly reached an arm out, she inched over and took refuge against his warm body. "Do you still want to be with me?" she asked after a moment.

"Excuse me?"

She couldn't recall ever hearing him sound quite so shocked and offended.

"Of _course_ I still want to be with you," he said. "Don't be stupid."

"I just—"

"Victoire." She looked at him. "I've been falling in love with you for longer than I really care to admit. When I gave you that ring, I _meant_ it. The only way I'm ever going anywhere is if you make me - and even then, I'll probably go very slowly, in hopes that you'll reconsider."

"Really?"

He brushed her hair back from her face. "Sweetheart, I can't imagine my life without you." He studied her face. "Do you still want to be with me?"

"Don't be stupid," she said immediately. _"You're_ not the one who might be turning into a werewolf."

"Then I guess our relationship is in pretty good shape." He kissed her softly and put his arms around her. "Whatever happens, we'll figure it out. Get some sleep."

The relative safety of his arms alleviated her anxiety a little, but it still took Victoire a long time to fall asleep.

By the time she woke up, she was alone in bed. Judging from the sunlight peeking through their thick blue curtains, it was mid-afternoon. The stinging sensation in her leg immediately brought her memories of the previous night flooding back.

She rubbed her eyes and sat up, trying to maintain some vague semblance of composure. Going to pieces never helped anyone.

She could faintly hear Teddy's voice. His words were unintelligible, but his tone sounded agitated.

She got out of bed, and briefly considered putting on something more than the shorts and oversized shirt of Teddy's that she was currently wearing. The bandage on her calf was clearly visible, and she wasn't ready for everyone to know about what happened.

At the same time, she doubted that Teddy had let anyone into the flat who didn't already know.

She opened the door quietly, and his voice became clearer.

"Well, what the _fuck_ are they going to do about it?"

Victoire stopped dead in her tracks. Teddy didn't swear often, and generally when he did, he wasn't yelling.

"I don't know yet," she heard her uncle's tired voice, and the pieces fit together. Of _course_ her uncle Harry would have heard. "Teddy, you have to understand – it's not that simple."

"What's so complicated about it?" Teddy snapped. "Some _lunatics_ were running around knowing that they were werewolves. They bit muggles. _They bit my fiancée._ They deserve to be tossed in Azkaban to rot for being so fucking _stupid."_

Victoire blinked and rubbed her eyes. Maybe she was dreaming - she'd didn't think she had _ever_ heard Teddy sound this angry.

"Seamus and Lavender told me that they weren't sure whether it was a bite." Teddy muttered something unintelligible. "And it's not that simple," Uncle Harry repeated. "Teddy, you have to understand, it wasn't so long ago that being a werewolf disqualified you from getting a _job_. Most of these people remember those days."

Teddy laughed, but Victoire couldn't detect a trace of humor in it. "Yeah, and that changed _twenty years ago_. Welcome to the 21st fucking century."

Her uncle sighed. "Teddy, it's a mess. Half of the werewolves were either muggles or children – including the one that attacked Victoire," he said pointedly, and Victoire was reminded of how small and undersized it had been. She felt a sudden wave of guilt - she hoped that she hadn't seriously hurt it. "Some of the others had no idea until they transformed last night. The werewolf lobby groups are all over this, Capture and Registry are clashing with Support, and it's all made more complicated by the fact that it was someone in a different department altogether that got attacked. I was really afraid for a moment that Seamus was going to kill someone."

Victoire felt a rush of affection toward her boss.

Her uncle hesitated, and then added, "Teddy, even if she was bitten, it's possible to lead a relatively normal life, especially these days."

"Harry, do you think I'm stupid?" Victoire could hear the anger and bitterness in Teddy's voice. "I _know_ what being a werewolf does to you. It's not just a 'take a potion at the full moon and everything's all right,' so don't _tell_ me that it is."

"Teddy, please calm down."

"Then _please_ stop fucking patronizing me."

"I'm not trying to patronize you," her uncle said. "I'm just telling you that there's a lot that you don't understand."

Teddy wasn't listening. "About being a werewolf?" he snapped. "I understand _plenty._ I've done my bloody research, remember?"

Uncle Harry sighed again. "I remember."

So could Victoire, but only very vaguely. She'd still been a second- or third-year when Teddy had gotten interested in his father and started doing all kinds of research about werewolves, and the only thing that she remembered about that phase was finding him in the library at school on a sunny afternoon when everyone else was outside and playing a game of chess with him.

He was still talking. "And I understand that because some people are _cowards_ who haven't gotten with the times, she might be in for a lifetime of pain and exhaustion. And what about children? Where does _that_ leave us?"

Victoire felt her heart stop. She hadn't even considered that.

Not that she and Teddy had any immediate plans to have children, of course, but they'd talked about it in the abstract, and agreed that they wanted to do so sometime in the future. The idea of not being able to do that hurt. A lot.

She pushed it out of her mind. There was no use going to pieces now.

Teddy lowered his voice a little. "Harry, she asked me whether I still wanted to be with her. What the _hell_ am I supposed to do with _that?"_

"Did she?" Her uncle sounded absolutely exhausted. "Teddy, just be patient. She's been through a traumatic experience."

"I _am_ being patient," Teddy said, the anger finally beginning to leave his voice. "But how the hell can she even ask that? I haven't ever been exactly subtle in how I feel about her." His voice broke a little, and Victoire started down the hall. "I just don't want her to have to go through this."

Victoire stopped in the doorway. Teddy was sitting on the couch, hunched over and staring down at his hands. Her uncle was sitting in a chair, a small crease of concern between his eyebrows as he watched his godson.

Teddy looked up to see her and winced. "Did I wake you up?"

She shook her head. His face was suddenly carefully composed, though his agitation was still apparent - he'd completely lost control of his metamorphmagus powers. His hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and eyes were now a disconcerting blood red - as she took a few steps toward him, she realized that even his irises had taken on a dark reddish hue.

It was thoroughly disconcerting, and none the less so for her having witnessed this particular display on two other occasions.

He raised his eyebrows and opened his arms tentatively.

Startling appearance aside, Victoire's heart melted a little. She made her way over to the couch and curled up against him. He shifted his position to wrap an arm around her. "I love you," he murmured in her ear.

She squeezed his hand. "Hi, Uncle Harry."

Her uncle smiled tightly. "Hey, Vic. How are you feeling?

"Tense. I'll live." She hesitated, and then asked, "Did Seamus really come close to killing someone?"

Her uncle's face relaxed a little. "I was definitely worried for a minute or two." He looked at them for a moment, and then rose. "I'll leave the two of you alone. If there's any news, I'll tell you, and if you need anything… just tell me."

"Thanks," Victoire said. It was times like this that made Uncle Harry her favorite uncle – he always knew when he could help and when she just wanted to be left alone. Teddy had always said that it was because she and Harry were typically very similar in that regard. She got up and gave him a quick hug. "I'll be okay," she said softly.

He patted her back. "I know you will." They parted, and he looked past her at Teddy. "A word?"

Teddy got to his feet and followed his godfather to the door. After they'd left the room, Victoire settled back into the couch. She lay her head down on one of the arms - she didn't have the energy to care what her uncle was saying to Teddy. Instead, she gazed at the framed picture of her and Teddy sitting on the side table. It had been taken in the dead of the previous winter, when they'd gone ice skating with Fred – in the picture, her hair whipped all over the place from under a blue hat Grandma Molly had made for her as they twirled across the ice.

She sighed.

"I love you," she heard from the doorway, and looked up to see Teddy standing there. His hair and eyebrows were still red, but they'd darkened considerably, and at least his eyelashes and eyes were back to their customary brown.

Victoire tried to smile back, though she wasn't quite sure she managed it. He rejoined her on the couch. When he lay back, she moved into his embrace.

They sat there in silence for a moment as he stroked her hair.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," he replied. "Is it about why I can't ever seem to keep my hands off your hair?"

This time she really did manage a smile. "No." She hesitated for a moment – given the tirade she'd overheard, she was not entirely sure how he would react to this, but she needed to ask it. "Are you sure you wouldn't care if…" Her voice trailed off, and she looked up at his face.

"If you turn out to be a werewolf?" he finished for her. His face was perfectly composed. She nodded, and he sighed. "Not caring isn't the word. Of course I'll _care._ But it won't change how I feel about you."

"And knowing that I turn into a wolf won't make you less attracted to me?"

Teddy snorted. "Sweetheart, I also know that you can turn into a hawk any time you like, and that hasn't made me less attracted to you."

That was actually a fair point, and one that she hadn't considered.

"This is a little different."

"A little," he acknowledged. "But no. Potion or not, I doubt I'll be interested in having sex with you while you're transformed, but other than that, I think we're good."

That drew a genuine laugh from her

"I love you," she said softly, shifting her body so that she was kneeling on the couch facing him. He began to breathe more quickly, and she laughed again. "I haven't even done anything."

"You're existing," he told her. "Vic, you really don't need to worry about me finding you less attractive. Given what's happened, I know it's completely inappropriate, but when you walked in – with my godfather sitting right here, remember – my first thought was that I wanted to scoop you up, carry you off to bed, and make sweet, passionate, adoring love to you."

Victoire looked down at herself. _"Why?_ I must look like a disaster."

"Not to me." He reached up to stroke her face gently, and after a moment, he broke into a smile. "Want me to prove it to you?"

She considered that for a moment. "Yes."

"Good." He reached up for her, and she allowed him to pull her down for a deep, fulfilling, and very convincing kiss.


	5. A Late Night Visit

Victoire woke up later that night to someone banging on their front door. When she rolled over, she saw that Teddy had his wand in his hand and was already pulling on a pair of pyjama trousers. She squinted at the clock as he made his way into the hallway. It was almost 3am.

She heard him unlock the door and crack it through the open bedroom door, and then the unmistakable sound of her sister's voice. "Where is she?"

"Dominique, it's 3 in the morning," Teddy said tiredly. "Couldn't this wait?"

"No, it couldn't," Dominique snapped, and Victoire heard the click of her shoes as she entered the flat. After a moment, the silhouette of her sister's frame appeared in the doorway, and Victoire barely managed to hold back a groan. "What the _hell_ , Victoire?"

Victoire rubbed her eyes, sincerely hoping that the appearance of her sister was just a very bad dream. She had no such luck. "How did you find out?" she asked as she grabbed a jumper off the floor and pulled it over her head.

"Quinn Dedworth." Dominique pointed her wand at the lamp. "Illuminatum."

The room suddenly filled with light, and Teddy followed Dominique into the room. He stopped just inside and leaned against the door. His mouth was pressed into one thin line of obvious disapproval, which Dominique was just as obviously ignoring.

"Van told him?" Victoire couldn't help but feel a little stung. She knew that Van was close to his brother Quinn – they'd shared a flat for years – but she had really thought that he'd keep his mouth shut about what had happened for at least a couple days, especially since Quinn worked with Dominique.

Dominique snorted and pushed her pale blonde hair back from her face. "Yeah, right. Like he'd do that to _you."_

Victoire felt her body relax a little, and she let out a sigh. When she glanced up at Teddy, his gaze was determinedly fixed on the floor. "So how did you find out, then?" she asked her sister.

"Quinn said that Van said that things hadn't gone great when he got home last night, but wouldn't get into detail. I went to ask you what that meant this morning, but then you weren't there, so I found Van, only he wouldn't tell me anything. Then I got Hannah to pressure Micah—"

"Dominique, how many people did you accost to find out something that your sister would have told you in a couple days, anyway?" Teddy asked pointedly, and she shot an annoyed glance in his direction.

"Teddy, go make some tea or something," she snapped, and turned back to Victoire. Teddy closed his eyes, and Victoire knew from previous rants on the subject of her little sister that he was reminding himself that she was young and immature and didn't know any better.

Given that Dominique was eighteen at this point, Victoire doubted that it would stave off a blowup for much longer.

He glanced over at Victoire. "I really would love some tea, if you don't mind," she said softly, and he sighed.

"All right," he said, and turned to leave the room. When his back was to her, he must have muttered something to Dominique, because her eyes flashed dangerously, but he left without further incident.

"Dominique, you need to stop doing that," Victoire said tiredly, pulling her knees up to her chest. "One of these days, he's going to lose it."

Her sister shrugged. "Yeah, well, for him, what does that mean?" She lowered her voice, and said, in a rather poor imitation of Teddy's voice, "Dominique, you are being annoying, please stop."

Victoire actually managed a laugh. "You should have heard him earlier today." She related the conversation between Teddy and Uncle Harry that she'd heard earlier in the day; by the time she finished, Dominique looked rather impressed.

"Good for him," she said. "He needs to learn how to be a jerk sometimes."

Dominique didn't actually dislike Teddy, any more than he disliked her. Victoire knew that they cared about each other, and Dominique's reaction to their engagement had been unadulterated enthusiasm and excitement.

The issue was that Dominique was impatient, impetuous, and occasionally a bit callous, where Teddy was exactly the opposite. And when it came to any problem Victoire was having, they were both utterly convinced that their way was better and the other's would only end up doing her more harm than good.

"So Micah told Hannah?" Victoire asked, bringing the subject back around to her sister's invasion of her flat. Dominique nodded, and Victoire wrinkled her nose. "Sucker."

Hannah Randall, who had been one of Dominique's best friends since they'd met at the Leaky Cauldron a few summers before Victoire started at Hogwarts, was very, very sweet. She was so sweet and genuine that you often forgot that she wasn't naive and innocent as well.

Add that to the fact that Micah had been considering asking her out since she'd joined Werewolf Capture that summer, and Victoire wasn't surprised he'd cracked.

"Stop trying to change the subject," her sister said irritably. "What _happened?_ Micah said you were injured, but you look fine to me."

Victoire opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again before she could speak. Her mind had suddenly gone blank.

"We'll see if she's still fine next full moon," Teddy said from the doorway as he carefully carried the mugs of tea into the room.

Dominique's eyes got wide. "You—" Victoire nodded, and her sister closed her eyes. _"Shit."_

Teddy handed one of the mugs to Victoire, and she took it gratefully. He turned to her sister. "Sorry, Dominique. It's been a long night. I didn't want to sit around my kitchen pretended that it takes awhile to make tea. I made you a cup, though." He gave her the other mug before settling back in next to Victoire. When she went to kiss him on the cheek, she could smell scotch on his breath. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he shrugged.

"That's all right," Dominique replied. She was blowing on her tea and did not appear to have noticed the exchange. "I didn't know you'd yelled at Uncle Harry today. If I had I wouldn't have been such a jerk."

Teddy seemed to consider saying something, but ended up deciding against it.

"What happened?" Dominique asked again, and Victoire sighed. She knew that her sister was not going to leave until she'd been told what had happened.

By the time Dominique left, Victoire was absolutely exhausted.

"I'm sorry about her," she said as Teddy pulled back the covers and crawled back into bed with her.

He sighed. "It's fine," he said, reaching out tentatively for her. She wriggled over so that she was closer to him, and he threaded his arm around her waist. "She didn't want me hovering." He was not quite able to keep the irritation out of his voice, but Victoire didn't call him on it. This was their problem, and she knew better than to get in the middle of it.

Instead, she turned to him and said, "Scotch, though, Teddy? Really?"

He smiled and lowered his head a little to brush his lips against hers. "Occasionally, I need a drink to deal with your sister, especially when it's three in the morning and you've been attacked by a werewolf."

"I'm sorry about her," Victoire said softly, resting her head against his chest. "She's just…" her voice trailed off, and he shook his head.

"Vic, don't get me wrong. I love your family. They're terrific. They've treated me like I'm a real part of their family since we started going out." He laughed, and she could feel the vibrations of it ripple through his chest. "I think I have more family being an orphan than most people who have parents have."

She turned her head a little to kiss his collarbone. "My family adores you."

"I know," he said. "Your parents didn't even really hold those nights you didn't go home over Christmas holiday in your seventh year against me, and I'm sure they knew exactly what we were doing."

Victoire had not been so lucky. Her parents had known better than to try and stop her from leaving the house – she was of age at the time, after all – but they'd subjected her to a long lecture about being careful when she was _intimate_ with Teddy and about how he was really a very nice boy but even so she shouldn't feel the need to _rush into things_ just because he was older.

By the end, she felt so uncomfortable and awkward that she'd wished that they'd just sent her to her room like they did when she was fifteen and out all night with Fred and Micah.

The only redeeming thing about the entire exchange was that her sister had eavesdropped on the conversation and then spent the next six months quoting it whenever their parents were not in earshot.

"And I really do like your siblings," Teddy added. "Dominique just gets under my skin sometimes, especially when she barges into our flat at three in the morning."

Victoire shifted her body into a more comfortable position and closed her eyes. "That's my sister," she said. "Let's go to sleep."

* * *

Victoire allowed Teddy to convince her to stay home for the next couple days, but between the articles splashed across the front of the Daily Prophet both mornings and having absolutely nothing to distract her from her anxiety, Victoire put her foot down after that. Spending all her time sitting at home moping wasn't going to solve anything, and even with visits from both Fred and Dominique, it was probably doing her more harm than good.

And besides, everyone needed to see her and know that she was fine; otherwise, the rumors would start flying.

Dominique approved wholeheartedly of her decision, but both Teddy and Fred seemed to think that it was a bad idea. According to Dominique, the trouble with them was that they were both Gryffindors who thought with their hearts, and they just didn't understand that Ravenclaws could compartmentalize things and control their emotions.

Which had, predictably, led to some sniping between the three of them that had both given Victoire a headache and validated her decision to go back to work.

Victoire loved her sister dearly, and she even thought that Dominique was probably right. However, she also thought that Dominique badly needed to learn how to use tact and diplomacy.

The thing that all three of them _did_ agree on was that her spells bouncing off the wolf was very, very strange. She'd had no word on any of the developments of the case, so she had no idea if whatever Van had snatched from around its neck had even been identified.

Which was yet _another_ reason to go back to work. She thought it was very peculiar, too, and she wasn't going to find any answers sitting at home.

She'd no sooner stepped out of the fireplace at work on her first day back, however, when Lavender appeared and asked her if she had a moment.

Though it was phrased as a question, Victoire knew far better than to interpret it as one. When one of your bosses asks you if you have a minute, you need to have a minute.

She therefore followed Lavender into Seamus's office without saying anything, though when the door closed more loudly than she'd been expecting it to behind her, she jumped. When she whirled around, Lavender pointed at the chair in front of the desk.

"Sit."

Victoire sat, and Lavender settled herself behind the desk and leaned forward. Her face was impossible to read.

For her, anyway. She rather wished that Van was here to interpret for her; he'd always had a strange fixation on Lavender that she'd never really been able to understand, though she suspected it was why he was perpetually single.

"Should you be back at work?" Lavender asked, and Victoire shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"I'm fine," she said. The statement came out sounding a little more defensive than she'd meant it to.

"No, you're not," Lavender said flatly. "No one is _fine_ that quickly."

Her tone made Victoire feel slightly unsettled; it was as if Lavender _knew_ about the nightmares. But she couldn't; Teddy was the only one who did, and Victoire was quite sure that he hadn't told anyone except maybe his godfather.

Then Victoire flashed back to something her uncle Ron had said shortly after she'd joined the D.C.B., before her aunt had elbowed him and told him to shut up. _He'd_ mentioned Lavender being locked up in the permanent ward at St. Mungo's for years after the war, because she'd had a complete nervous breakdown.

Victoire hadn't really believed him then. The idea of Lavender laying mute in a bed in St. Mungo's was so at odds with the very capable woman who helped run the division that she'd assumed he was just exaggerating again.

Now she wasn't so sure.

"I'm coping," Victoire said after a moment. "People bothering me about whether I'm sure I'm all right just makes that harder." That was the main reason she hadn't told her parents yet; she knew them, and she knew how much they'd try to help and only end up making it worse.

Her tone, however, had been sharper than she'd expected, and she winced. They might be more informal in the D.C.B. than some other divisions were, but Lavender was still her boss. "Sorry. I—"

Lavender shook her head. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I'll stop bothering you about it, but if you need help, or someone to talk to…" her voice trailed off.

Victoire could not possibly imagine going to _Lavender_ for comfort, but she nodded anyway. "Why didn't my spells work?" she asked, changing the subject.

Lavender eyed her for another moment before reaching into one of the drawers and pulling out something wrapped in a cloth. She put it on the table, and as she slid it toward Victoire, the fabric fell to the side, revealing a chain with a golden locket on it.

Victoire stared at it, and felt her heartbeat start to accelerate. "But.. but that's…"

"A shield charm," Lavender supplied for her. "Produced by Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes."

* * *

 _A/N: Thank you so much to 01PercabethAddict for their wonderful review on the last chapter, and for everyone who's favorited, followed, and read the story as well! As always, I love your feedback, so if you have a moment please leave a review!_


	6. Bill and Fleur

Victoire spent the next two days trying to figure out how to tell her favourite cousin that he had probably sold the charm that was to blame for her potential lycanthropy.

Lavender had not been able to tell her much about the necklace. The little girl had claimed that her uncle had given her the charm a few days before as an early birthday present. There was absolutely no reason to think that she was lying, but they had been unable to track the uncle down. He was a resident of the village, but he seemed to have completely disappeared without a trace.

Which was something that all the Ministry officials involved found very suspicious.

To make matters worse, the girl had apparently clammed up very quickly and refused to say anything else. Given the shock of everything that had happened, Lavender wasn't convinced that there was anything more sinister than her simply being a scared little girl going on, but it certainly didn't help matters. No one wanted to traumatise the poor child further - or get in hot water with Support, which was all over the case - but at the same time, they couldn't afford to let their only lead dry up.

Victoire heard all of this secondhand, of course; she had not met the girl, and she had absolutely no desire to. If she'd really wanted to, she probably could have figured out who the girl was - but she didn't want to. There simply wasn't any point, and she didn't need the added stress.

The first thing that had jumped into her mind when she'd heard all of this was that she wanted to talk to Teddy about it, but it quickly occurred to her that she might not be allowed to tell him. This was a highly sensitive case, and while it personally affected her, she wasn't really sure what she would be allowed to say, and she didn't want to land herself in any more trouble than she was already in.

When she mentioned her indecision to Van, however, he'd given her one of his _looks_ and told her to talk to her fiance, and screw Ministry protocol.

So she did.

"I found out why the spells bounced off the werewolf," she said offhandedly as Teddy began to clean up dinner that night.

He stopped and looked over at her, leaving the dishes hovering midair between the table and the sink. "Oh?" Despite an outward appearance of calm, she could see that his body had stiffened slightly, and his expression was far too politely attentive to be natural.

"It-" Victoire stopped herself. _"She,"_ she corrected. "She was wearing a shield charm." Teddy stared at her blankly, and she added, "From the shop."

"Jesus." Teddy muttered, running his free hand over his face. The dishes continued on to the counter, and fell unceremoniously into the basin. There was a faint chink of something potentially breaking, but they ignored it. "So it was an accident?"

Victoire bit her lip, and he sank into the seat next to her and laid his wand on the table. "Maybe," she said after a long pause. "Her uncle gave it to her a few days ago, but the Ministry hasn't been able to find him."

Her fiance's eyebrows shot up. "He's _missing?"_

She sighed. "Not _technically,"_ she said. Unless there was reason to think that the person was in immediate danger, the Ministry's definition of "missing" was very conservative.

Teddy closed his eyes. "So he's missing." This time it wasn't a question.

"Yes."

He shook his head and said, very softly, "I don't like this."

Victoire sighed again. "Neither do I."

She slept fitfully again that night.

* * *

Victoire tried to put off telling her parents for as long as possible. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate their support. She just didn't want them to worry, and she had no idea how to broach the subject in the first place. "Hi, Mum, hi, Dad, I think I might be a werewolf" seemed like a poor choice.

And anyway, she was handling it.

However, after several days of avoiding the issue, her sister cornered her after work and told her that if she didn't tell their parents soon, Dominique would do it for her.

Victoire did not much like being ordered around by her baby sister, but when she complained to Teddy, he just shrugged and said that Dominique had a point.

Sometimes, the only thing worse than them disagreeing with each other was agreeing with each other. It almost always meant that Victoire was going to get coerced into something she knew that she _should_ do but very strongly wanted to avoid.

Dominique had the final word when she'd asked Victoire what she would say if she caught dragon pox in the lab and decided not to tell her. Victoire had argued that that was completely different, but Dominique had stood her ground, and eventually Victoire agreed to tell their parents just to make her sister stop bothering her.

She was still feeling slightly resentful when she opened the door to her parents' house the next day and called out, "Mum? Dad?"

"Victoire?" she heard her mother call.

"Yeah," she replied, slipping off her shoes and walking past the carpeted staircase and the photographs that hung on the wall toward the general direction of the voice.

"We're in the living room," her father said as she neared the doorway. When she stepped inside, they both smiled at her.

"Well, this is a lovely surprise," her mother said, putting her book aside and getting to her feet to give Victoire a hug. There was still a faint French lilt to her speech, but years of living in England had muted it significantly as Victoire had grown up.

Her father got to his feet, too, and as soon as her mother let her go, he wrapped his arms around her. "It's good to see you, Vic," he said softly. She smiled tightly when he stepped back, and his eyes narrowed slightly. "This isn't a social call, is it?"

She swallowed hard. "No," she said after a minute. Thinking about her sister's threat was all that kept her from walking out the front door again. "I- er- have something to tell you."

"Of course, Victoire," her mother said, sinking back into her chair. "You know you can tell us anything."

Victoire bit her lip and sat down on the couch. "I know." Her heart was pounding wildly at the thought of having to relive the experience again. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to forget it.

When she'd finished relating a shortened version of what had happened in the woods that night, he parents sat there in shocked silence for a moment.

Then her mother had done exactly what Victoire had been afraid that she would do. She immediately rose, came to sit next to her, and gripped her hand before asking in a very serious voice, "Are you all right?"

There was _nothing_ that Victoire hated more than being asked if she was all right in a time of stress.

"I'm fine, Mum," she said a bit stiffly.

Her father, who had looked a little more thoughtful - though no less worried - during the retelling got up and took a few steps across the room to join them. "Maybe it's a good omen," he said as he sat down on Victoire's other side. She looked at him, startled, and he said, with a hint of a smile on his face, "Well, my encounter with a werewolf happened just before I married your mother, and look how that worked out."

Victoire snorted involuntarily and glanced over at her mother, who looked like she was trying to decide whether to laugh or to chastise him. After a moment, she settled for shaking her head, though Victoire could see that the corners of her mouth were upturned a little.

Her father slipped an arm around her shoulder. "No matter what happens, we're here for you," he said.

"I know, Dad." She rubbed her temples for a moment, and then tucked her hair behind her ears. "I know."

"Have you told your sister?" he asked, and Victoire felt a sudden stab of affection for them both. They weren't idiots; they knew that the last full moon had been almost a week ago, but they weren't pressing her about why she hadn't come to tell them before now.

"Yes," she said after a minute. "I told her and Fred. And Teddy, of course."

Her mother took her hand again, and Victoire closed her eyes. She was already feeling more relaxed, which was not necessarily a good thing. Being on edge meant that she kept moving and kept functioning. Relaxing might mean falling apart at the seams, and she couldn't afford that right now.

"How did Teddy take it?" her mother asked, and Victoire opened her eyes and managed a slight smile.

"Same as he takes anything." The memory of her fiance shouting at her uncle resurfaced, and she amended her statement. "Mostly. I think he's angry at the Ministry and at the situation."

Her mother frowned. "But how is he treating _you?"_ she pressed.

"Fine," Victoire said quickly. "He's being himself. He said it didn't affect how he felt about me, except for..."

She stopped herself before she mentioned Teddy's comment about sex with her if she did indeed transform, but her father shifted uncomfortably, and she could tell that he knew both her and Teddy well enough to have filled in the blank.

It occurred to her that it was probably good that she was finding humour in something. "Jesus, Dad, I've lived with him for two years. What do you think is happening?"

"Honestly, Vic, I try not to think too hard about the fact that both of my daughters are now adults."

Her mother patted her hand. "Ignore your father," she said, shooting him a glance. "Teddy is a very nice boy."

Victoire thought that the only people who had ever called Teddy 'a very nice boy' in the last decade were her mother and their landlady, but she kept her amusement at the description to herself. Teddy was a lot of very good things, but 'very nice boy' implied a sort of wholesome innocence that her fiance definitely did not have.

He was romantic, supportive, and completely in love with her. She knew that he would never pressure her into doing anything she didn't want to do - something that he'd been so paranoid about early in their relationship that she'd occasionally wanted to kill him.

However, she also knew for a fact that over the last five or six years, he'd spent more time thinking about sex with her than her friend Micah had spent thinking about sex in general.

And that was saying something.

The visit with her parents lasted only slightly longer than she'd really intended it to, which was better than she'd expected. At the sound of the flat door closing behind her, Teddy stuck his head out of the bathroom. He was clad in just his trousers, and there was shaving cream on his face. "How'd it go?" he asked.

She came to stand in the doorway of the bathroom and shrugged as he ran a razor over his face. "It went," she said. "My mother said that you were a 'very nice boy.'"

He snorted and glanced at her in the mirror. "How are you feeling?" he asked as he bent down and splashed water over his face.

Victoire hesitated. The visit to her parents - and having to relive the whole thing _again_ \- had done exactly what she was afraid it would do.

"Vic?" She looked up. She wasn't sure what he saw in her face, but judging from the concern in his eyes, he didn't like it. He tossed the towel he'd just used to dry his face to the side and took several steps toward her. When he reached her, he held out his arms.

Teddy had learned a long time ago that sometimes, the last thing Victoire wanted when she was stressed or unhappy was to be touched.

Today was not one of those days. She stepped forward, and as his arms closed around her, she burst into tears.


	7. The Man in the Smoke

Unfortunately, telling her parents was not Victoire's last step.

She needed to tell Fred about the charm.

Among other things, he might actually know who bought the charm - since the war, she knew that his father had started to keep careful records of who bought certain products, just in case, and though she wasn't _sure_ whether the shield charms were among them, it seemed likely that they were.

However, she couldn't help but feel nervous about doing so. Fred was her favourite cousin, and she knew the feeling was mutual. If he knew that he'd sold the charm that had turned her into a werewolf - and at this point, she was operating under the assumption that she was one, because including the qualifier 'might be' in her thoughts was only going to leave her more devastated when it turned out that she was - he was going to feel absolutely awful.

Which wasn't _really_ what she wanted. After all, it wasn't his fault.

Both Teddy and Dominique had refrained from pushing her about this particular issue, but as Teddy had gently pointed out, the longer she let it go the more likely it was to fester into misplaced resentment.

It was with that in mind that she broached the subject several days after she saw her parents. Teddy was working late to make up for the time he'd taken off right after the accident, and Fred was over at their flat.

"I have something I need to tell you," she said shortly after he'd arrived.

"What's that?" he asked. "Do I have to dress up in a dress for your wedding after all?"

Victoire let out a snort. She'd ultimately decided that she wanted both Fred and Micah to be 'bridesmaids' in the wedding, which had led to a great many jokes about how neither had the legs to pull off a dress. "No," she said after a moment. "It's about the accident."

That was how she'd begun to think of it in her mind; 'the attack' just sounded so morbid and terrible, and she was sure that thinking about it as such just raised her anxiety level.

"What about it?" he asked, suddenly looking quite serious.

She cleared her throat. "Remember how I told you that our spells didn't work?" He nodded. "Well..." She swallowed hard and forced herself to keep talking. "There was a reason for that."

He raised his eyebrows. "Which was?"

Her heart was pounding in her chest right now, and she felt vaguely as though she might throw up. "It was a shield charm," she managed to get out. "From the shop."

Fred stared at her for a minute before slumping back in his seat. "Shit," he muttered.

As he dissected the information, Victoire shifted awkwardly in her chair. She had no idea what to say. Rather than look at her cousin, she fixed her gaze on the blue vase sitting over their fireplace that Teddy had brought back from his trip to Greece the year before.

When she finally glanced back at Fred, he had his head in his hands. "Stupid," he mumbled. "We should have known something like this could happen."

"I don't see how," Victoire said. Her voice came out sharper than she'd intended it to, and he winced. She felt a small stab of guilt, but didn't bother to soften her tone; she didn't have the energy to waste on little gestures like that. Fred was tough. He'd get over it. "Someone buying a charm and giving it to a little girl so no witch or wizard will be able to defend themselves against her when she turns into a werewolf isn't exactly something you plan for."

He lifted his head and stared at her. "Wait. It wasn't an accident?"

She sighed. "We don't know for sure, but probably not."

Fred looked at though he wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or even worse than he already did.

"If I showed it to you, could you tell me who bought it?" Victoire asked.

"You have it?" She nodded, and he said, "Yeah, absolutely. Dad always keeps a record of that sort of thing, just in case." He got to his feet. "Where is it?"

She let out an involuntary laugh. "Fred, I don't have it _here_. It's at work."

"Oh." He fell back onto the couch, looking a little embarrassed. "That makes sense."

"Can you come in tomorrow?" she asked. He nodded quickly, and they moved onto other, less depressing topics until Teddy got home and the three of them sat down to dinner.

The next day, Victoire got up at her usual time. Given the situation, both Seamus and Lavender had made it clear to her that if she wanted to come in later, she could, but Victoire knew that falling into those habits when you had a good excuse just made it harder to really get back into your daily life for when you didn't.

When she got out of the shower and entered the kitchen, however, she found Teddy already in there. Steam was rising from the cup of hot tea was sitting on the counter, and he seemed to be frying something on the stove.

She collapsed into one of the chairs, and he looked over his shoulder at her. "Good morning," he said.

Victoire forced herself to smile at him in return, though inside, she was starting to feel a little irritated. Teddy had always been a caring, attentive sort of boyfriend, but since the accident he'd been bending over backwards to make everything easier for her and to reassure her that they were okay.

Once she'd gotten over the initial shock, she hadn't really spent much time worrying about their relationship or whether he would leave her because of this. She knew he wouldn't.

So all of the reassurance he was offering - well-intentioned though it was - was starting to leave her feeling stifled and like she wanted to strangle him. She wasn't made of glass, and his acting like she was only made going through the day harder.

"Thanks," she muttered when he slid the plate of eggs and bacon in front of her, along with her cup of tea. When she glanced up at his face, he looked a little taken aback and hurt, and she immediately felt more than a little guilty.

"Sorry," he said softly, collecting his plate from the counter and slumping into the seat across from her. She studied him as he started to eat; the floppy brown hair he'd grown fond of in the last month covered some of his face, but his body language gave away his feelings. He glanced up, and she could see the confusion and guilt in his eyes as he said, "You should eat."

"I'm sorry," she said softly, reaching out to grab his free hand. "Teddy, I appreciate this, I do. I'm just not made of glass. You don't need to take care of me."

He sighed and put his fork down. "I've been smothering you, haven't I?" She hesitated, and he added, "Vic, tell me the truth."

"A little," she admitted. "Yes." She squeezed his hand. "Teddy, you don't need to prove anything to me."

"I know." He ran a hand through his hair, which rippled into a dark blue. "I just want to make it easier for you."

"You do," she said softly. "But you're going a little overboard."

He wrinkled his nose. "I'll try to scale back," he promised.

"Thanks." Victoire turned to her food, which was quite good, and after they'd both finished and deposited the plates in the sink, Teddy turned to her and kissed her forehead.

"I'm going to go back to bed for a few hours," he said. "Have a good day."

She smiled. "You too."

It took Victoire a few more minutes to finish getting everything together, and when she finally began to make her way toward the door, she was feeling a bit more optimistic about everything with Teddy. As she passed their closed bedroom door, however, she heard a faint noise from inside and stopped. It took her a moment to place the sound, because she heard it so rarely.

He was crying.

She let out a shaky breath and leaned against the wall, trying to figure out whether she should go in there. At this point, however, she was afraid that she'd do more harm than good, so she took out her wand and used it to paint the words "I love you" on the mirror across from their room before slipping out the front door. She felt as though that was rather inadequate, especially considering everything he'd been doing for her lately, but she wasn't sure what else she could do.

When she got to work, their little cubicle was mercifully empty, and she carefully took a seat behind her desk, which was still shrouded in darkness. Rather than turn on the lights and get to work, she closed her eyes and, for once, allowed the guilt and tension to course through her.

"V?"

She swiped the tears away and looked up quickly. Van was standing near his desk, and while she couldn't see his face, she heard the concern in his voice.

"What?" she asked, hoping that he didn't hear the slight waver when she spoke.

He grabbed his chair and dragged it over. "What's wrong?" he asked.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I snapped at Teddy," she said softly. "This morning. He got up to make me breakfast, and I've just been getting so frustrated with the way he's been treating me like I'm fragile and about to fall apart that I was kind of a bitch about it." The tears started to drip down her face again. "And he acted like it was fine, but when I left, I heard him c-c-crying about it." She coughed, and Van sighed and produced a tissue.

"It's okay," he said as she dabbed at her eyes. "I promise. I've had women - well, mostly one woman, I guess - make me cry loads of times, and I got over it."

She snorted through her tears and blew her nose. "He's just trying to help," she said softly. "You know?"

Van sighed. "I know," he said. "But that doesn't mean that what he's doing is working, and if you didn't address it you'd probably just end up resenting him."

She gave a half-hearted shrug. "But-"

"Look, Vic," Van said, talking over her. "Tough love time." He put his hands on her shoulders and swiveled her around to look at him. "You are spoiled," he said, enunciating every word clearly. She opened her mouth to argue, but he didn't give her an opening. "Being with Teddy has spoiled you, because he's so easygoing that he can shrug most things off. But relationships are messy. I'm sure this isn't the first time you've made him cry, and I'm also sure it won't be the last. It needed to be said. He'll get over it. So will you. Stop stressing."

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "But-"

"No buts," he interrupted. "Talk to him when you get home and make sweet sweet love or whatever it is that you do, and move on."

Victoire felt her face start to get hot, and she was glad it was too dark for him to see. "No wonder you don't have a girlfriend," she shot back instead.

He clapped her on the shoulder and pulled back. "See, there's the Vic we all know and love." He glanced over his shoulder, lowered his voice, and said, "And anyway, the _real_ reason I don't have a girlfriend is because I'm madly in love with my boss."

"Oh, God," Victoire said, wiping away her tears one more time and pointing her wand at the orbs floating along the ceiling. The room lit up, revealing a broad grin across his face. "You have issues," she informed him. "You were dropped on your head as a child, weren't you?"

Van shrugged. "Quite possibly," he said cheerfully, getting up and pulling his chair back across the floor. "Now get to work."

Despite Van's somewhat callous methods, Victoire found to her surprise that she _was_ feeling a little better about everything. She grabbed a stack of papers and got to work.

After a few hours, a shadow fell across the center of the small room. When she looked up, she saw Lavender standing at the entrance.

"Vic, your cousin is here."

Victoire jumped out of her chair and covered the room in just a few strides. Lavender led her out into the corridor and toward the office. When she opened the door and they entered the room, Victoire saw Fred scrutinising a large map that was pinned to the wall.

Lavender cleared her throat, and he spun around. "Hi," he said, sounding a little awkward. He seemed to be unsure of whether or not he should be looking at Lavender's scarred face, and he ended up focusing on Victoire. "I'm- er- here to look at that necklace."

Victoire nodded, and Lavender made her way toward the heavy desk and bent down to rifle through the drawer.

"Stop being so uncomfortable," Victoire muttered to her cousin, who shrugged helplessly. "It's not that different from my dad, you know."

"But I know your dad," he whispered back. "I don't know -"

Lavender straightened up, and he stopped talking. "This is it," she said, laying the necklace on the desk. Fred went to examine it, and Victoire followed him.

"Well, it's definitely one of ours," he said, peering at it. He pulled out his wand and tapped it to the necklace, and a silvery cloud with a man's face in it rose out of the pendant. Fred stared at it for a moment before nodding. "I remember him," he said. "He definitely bought it at the Hogsmeade branch."

"What else do you remember?" Lavender pressed, and Fred shrugged.

"Not much. He was pretty ordinary. I only remember him because he came in on a slow day and I thought it was a bit odd."

"There's _nothing_ else that you remember at all?" Lavender asked. "What else did he look at? How did he pay for it?"

Fred shrugged again, looking lost. "The usual. The fireworks, the sweets. Then he picked this up, brought it up to the till, and handed over the silver." He looked back at the face. "Look, there was literally nothing special about him. He was friendly enough, he mentioned the weather, and then he left."

Victoire looked back at the face shrouded in the fog. He had sandy, flat-looking hair and a slightly-larger-than-average nose. His forehead was a little short, and his eyebrows were a little bushy.

There was nothing remotely interesting about him. The only thing that was clear was that this was definitely not the little girl's uncle - they looked nothing alike.

How on earth were they going to track this man down when they had so little to go on?

* * *

 _A/N: Thank you so much to ShishaLepus and Potter Princess 13 for their reviews! I'd love to know what everyone thought of this chapter, so if you have the chance to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it. :)_


End file.
